The Talk
by LadyDivine91
Summary: One day, while spending some time with his eight-year-old daughter, Lisa Snart asks her father a question that stops him in his tracks, and as much as Len would prefer Barry field this one, he realizes that the only responsible thing to do is give her an honest answer. Coldflash. Leonard Snart, Barry Allen (mentioned)


**Written for the Coldflash Week 2016 prompt 'Domestic Life'.**

"Oh, oh, oh. Hey, Bug. Let me help you up," Len says, rushing across the frozen lake to collect his daughter from the ice.

"Thanks, Dad," Lisa says, accepting his help but struggling to get back up on her skates before her dad reaches her.

Len grins. That stubborn streak. That willingness to accept help as long as she can still do most of the work by herself - that's the Barry Allen in her.

That's what Len sees most when he looks at her.

Since she pretty much has herself handled by the time he gets to her, he moves on to step two on the overprotective father's checklist and starts looking her over for cuts and bruises.

"What happened out there, Bug?"

Lisa watches her dad brush snow off her clothes, a condescending smirk on her rosy lips. "I fell."

Len rolls his eyes. Only eight-years-old and she's already such a smart ass. "I know you _fell_. But did someone push you? Trip you?" Len glares at a cluster of boys around Lisa's age who he's been keeping an occasional eye on. He notices that they're joined at the hip, convening over _something_ while shooting suspicious looks at the two of them. He thinks he sees them laughing … the little bastards. "Is there someone I gotta ice?"

"No," Lisa says through a burst of laughter. "No, I just fell. All on my own. With no help from anyone."

"Okay then." Len stands to his full height and glares at the boys again to make sure he gets his unspoken point across. The boys, each one turning sheet white, disperse, speeding as far across the lake as they can and away from the hard-eyed man with the icy stare. "So, whaddya wanna do now? Hmm? You wanna head for the homestead?"

"Maybe in a bit." Lisa thoughtfully chews her chapped lower lip. "But first, would you take a lap with me?" She holds out her gloved hand for him to take.

Len raises an eyebrow – not at the request, but at the shy, unsure way she asks. She sounds like she has something heavy on her head. Actually, she's been like that, way too caught up in her own thoughts, since she came back from her weekend in Star City.

"Sure I will," he says, taking her hand and pulling her slowly around the ice.

The conversation seems to end there and they walk in silence, the _shhhing … shhhing_ of Lisa's blades cutting across the surface of the lake the only sound around them, and Len starts to wonder if she's changed her mind. What does he do about that? Does he ask her what's up? Or does he give her space and wait? Barry's the one who usually fields the difficult life questions – where do babies come from; why do boys have a penis and girls have a vagina; what happens after we die; all of those, with a little help from the folks down at S.T.A.R. Labs. Len should consider it a blessing if she decides to defer to the one parent who's been able to make life seem less scary for her.

Though, he does have to admit that it sucks feeling like she can't come to him with her problems. Or maybe she just hasn't come up with a problem that she feels he's qualified to handle.

In which case, whatever's on her mind should slightly terrify him.

It's when they reach a third of the way around that she finally says, "Daddy? Can I ask you a question?"

"You can ask me anything."

That seems to give her the courage to ask what she needs to ask, because she goes from chewing her lip to blurting out, "Daddy, did you used to be a villain?"

 _Except that_ , Len thinks. But he takes a breath in and sighs instead of saying it. "What makes you ask that?"

"Something I heard Mom say."

"Really. And what did Felicity say?"

"Well, she was talking to Uncle Ollie about how this will be the sixth anniversary of _taking Leonard Snart off their most wanted list_."

"I see," Len says, not thrilled that this was the topic of conversation during one of Lisa's weekend visits with her mother. "Your mom and her (he hard swallows, stopping himself before he can say the word _rat_ ) husband were just talking about that in the living room or the kitchen where you could hear?"

"Uh … not exactly," Lisa admits, returning to nervously chewing her lip. "They were … kind of … _in some secret lair in the basement_ ," she speeds out at the end.

"So, you were spying?" Len admonishes, while inside he thinks _That's my girl_.

"Maybe."

"Did you ask your father about this?"

"A-ha."

"And what did _he_ say?"

She takes a deep breath in preparation, and Len knows that whatever her father told her, it's most likely poetic and long-winded. "He said that you were an intelligent, cunning, creative man with a difficult path to walk, and that you did a lot of things, both good and bad, with great passion. But that the more he got to know you, the more he saw good in you." Len chews his cheek, trying to keep from laughing. That sounds like the vague but complimentary b.s. that Barry Allen would spin. Plus, he's gotten a lot of mileage out of that _seeing good in him_ comment. Not only did it get Len into bed (not that Barry had to try too hard), but it opened the door to Len gaining acceptance from the rest of The League of Super Geeks that Barry is a part of. "Other than that, he told me to ask you. He said it wasn't his story to tell."

Len's mouth pulls into a thin, unamused line. Barry passed the ball. That's so unlike him. At least he didn't go the route of spilling the gorier details. Not that he would. That's not his style. He left the dirty work to Len. But, then again, Len deserves it.

Len thinks for a moment, trying to decide what he _should_ tell. Where does he begin? He had wanted to leave his past in the past for as long as he could, especially where his daughter was concerned.

But that's the thing about running from the past. When you least expect it, it catches up with you.

"Lisa, you are an intelligent, cunning, creative little girl …"

Lisa grins. "Just like you, Daddy?"

"Yup. Just like me." And he means it – from her stunning blue eyes to her sharp wit, she is every inch Leonard Snart's daughter. She has Barry's aptitude for science, and her mother's exceptional math skills, but those can be taught. She also has Len's dry sense of humor, his quick thinking in survival situations, and his eye for an easy mark – something the two of them hone in secret, playing around with hypotheticals just for fun. "Except that you are much luckier than I ever was. You have a mom who loves you, two dads who love you, and a ton of aunts and uncles who love you …"

"One of who's an alien!"

"Shhh, yes." Len drops his voice to a significant whisper and sweeps his eyes around, checking to see who might be listening. The gang of boys is nowhere to be seen, and no one else has arrived. They have the lake entirely to themselves. "One of who's an alien. But I'm going to tell you some truth about me because I think you can handle it."

Lisa swallows and squeezes his hand, suddenly afraid. "O-okay."

"I didn't have all of that, Lees." Len squeezes her hand back, finding he's doing it more for his comfort than for hers. "I had a mom who loved me, but she died early, and your grandpa …" He halts, deciding that Lewis Snart doesn't deserve the honor of having his granddaughter know a blessed thing about him. "I try to forget that he even existed. I spent most of my life raising your Aunt Lisa, and I'd like to say I was good at it ..."

"She says you were."

"She does, huh?" Len doesn't know if he's questioning, scoffing, or agreeing. "Well, whether I was or not, it's hard to escape your upbringing. I wasn't raised to be a good man. I was raised to be a criminal. And that's what I became. So, yes. I was what you might call a villain. In fact, your father, your mother, your aunts and uncles, and I all met because I was trying to …"

"Do bad things to them?" Lisa circumvents, replacing whatever her dad was about to say with words she's willing to accept.

"Yeah. I was trying to do bad things to them. Your father even put me in prison, but I busted out. After that, a bunch of stuff changed."

"You went on the Waverider."

"Yup."

"You became a good guy."

"In a manner of speaking."

"And then … you died." Lisa sniffs, as if she isn't talking to her dad in the flesh, the man holding her hand, very much alive.

"In a way." Len looks into Lisa's solemn face, pulling the goofiest grin he can to get her to laugh. She smiles, but only half way. "I shifted out of existence to a different timeline."

"But Father found you and brought you back."

"A-ha. That's when we decided to get married and have you. It was hard finding someone willing to carry you, all things considered …" (which is Len's polite way of saying that most women didn't want to carry the child of a reformed criminal, especially one with a rep like Len's, for any amount of money) "… so after a long and exhaustive search, your mom offered to carry you for us."

"But then you went back to being bad." Lisa's voice takes on a surprising tone, a reproachful tone, and it breaks his heart.

"I left," he admits, "for about two years. I didn't think that I could be good for you. I thought the best thing I could do for you was leave. I went back to being a criminal because it was the only thing I really knew how to do."

Lisa stops skating. Her head drops, but she doesn't take her hand from Len's grasp, and that gives Len hope. It means that, regardless of how much hearing that her dad left her to be a villain again hurts, she doesn't hate him for it. Len gets down on one knee in the snow, bending low to catch his daughter's eyes. "But I came back. So if you haven't guessed by now, _you're_ the reason I stopped."

"Why?" Lisa asks with a tiny shrug.

"Because when you live your life for yourself for so long, you answer to nobody. Your successes, your failures, they're all your own. And that's good for a while. But when someone depends on you, looks up to you, you answer to them. I know what your Aunt Lisa told you, but I kinda failed at that with her. I tried to be the best big brother I could be and take care of her, but I was a young man, and kinda selfish." Len brings his forehead to rest against Lisa's, forcing her to look him in the eyes. "But I'm not that man anymore. And if I am still selfish, it's because I want what's best for you. And what's best for you was hanging up my cold gun for good."

"Do you mean it?" Lisa asks, tears rolling down her cheeks. Len raises a hand and clears them away quickly before they can freeze. Len has a thing for not letting ice touch Lisa's skin, which is one of the reasons he's so quick on the draw whenever she falls on the lake.

"Yeah, I mean it," Len says, pinching her sides until she starts giggling. And when she does, she throws her arms around his neck and hugs him tight.

"I love you, Daddy."

Len holds her in his arms and sighs. "I love you, too, Bug." And it's at times like this when he realizes just how much. She's a mixture of everything in the world that he loves, the most precious thing that's ever been his. No diamond in the universe could compare. He'd give up his life to protect her, loves her just a hair more than he loves her father. Having someone like that in his life is frightening, but only because he doesn't want to let her down. "So, whaddya say we head on home and make dinner for your father? I don't have eight layers of clothes on like you. I'm freezing my ass off out here."

"Daddy! Language!" Lisa scolds, lifting her feet obediently while Len affixes guards to her blades so she can walk the short distance to their house. Len shakes his head in minor disbelief when he gets the last one on, her tiny skate in his hands nailing some big facts home. A beautiful house by a lake in a quiet suburb in Missouri, with a husband and, of all things, a kid. It seems like a dream, one that was never Len's. But here he is … and he can't picture himself being anywhere else.

"Now _that_ sounds like your father," Len kids, picking Lisa up anyway, preferring to walk home with her in his arms.

"Well, I'm _both_ your daughters, so it only makes sense."

"True, true," he agrees. "So" – Len clears his throat – "you got to see Oliver Queen's secret lair, huh?"

"Yeah," Lisa says in a hushed and excited voice. "Do you wanna know what it looks like?"

"No," Len answers without thought, his gut telling him that he's not a criminal anymore, so by no means is he interested in the secret base of operations of the one and only Green Arrow … except, he _is_ interested. He's _hella_ interested. "Well, you know, since we've got a ways to walk, why don't you just fill me in on the basics."

"Like what?"

"You know – size, location, ease of access, armament … just … anything you think I should know … hypothetically speaking, of course."


End file.
